


Paris in a Bottle

by luckora



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: French Revolution, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memories, Reminiscing, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 20:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19236313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luckora/pseuds/luckora
Summary: In which Francis thinks about his past as a nation, and wonders if anything would have been different had he acted another way.





	Paris in a Bottle

France looked through the window only to be met by fog and rain. What a weather, he thought. The weather was usually something that influenced his mood, and the raining that had been going on for days didn't exactly bring him any joy.

Why am I even here? He thought. Shouldn't I be home, with my people? 

During battle he had found himself cornered, with nothing but the sea behind him. With no hope to fight back, and refusing to let himself be capture he had fled to the opposite side of the Channel. It felt wrong, what was he doing at an old ennemy's? But England had let him stay, at least until now.

And France was still wondering: what if?

What if he had not fled?

He remembered, while he was still a rather young country, or well, way younger than now. When he still had the body of a teenage boy, and after one hundred years of war against his current host. He thought about Joan of Arc, who had brought him to victory. He had fought alongside the young girl more than once, her memory more vivid than ever.

But he had not been there.

When his king had decided to abandon the girl and let her be imprisonned, then burnt at the stake, Francis had not dared to attend. He had not done anything at all.

But maybe he could have... maybe he could have advocated in her favour to the king, maybe he could have freed her, maybe he could at least have been there in her last moments, and yet...

At the end of the day, he had to obey to his ruler. That was what a country's life was like... and no matter how much he wondered what would have happened, Joan was still dead. The only thing that would have happened had he been there would be trauma.

Still, he could have disobeyed...

He had done it, at times...

It had earned him a painful mark on his neck.

Maybe it was because, deep inside he has still considered King Louis XVI to be his boss. The man had been good to him, but had had to deal with the backlash of spending fortuned to help America with his independance, leaving the country with massive debt, and the population starving. The people was angry and demanded for freedom and equality. When the king fled, France had followed him, with the hopes of building a kingdom again.

However, they had all been caught. They had been traitors. They had to be executed. Although Francis couldn't die, even with his head chopped off by a guillotine, the execution remained a symbol.

He had not sided with his people.

And what if he had? France closed his eyes and tried to imagine.

He would have stood valiantly with the revolutionnaries, for a land of Freedom, what France was supposed to be standing for.

But the revolution had not been that utopia everyone dreamed of. So much blood had been spilled. Could he have stood for that? Besides, by the end of it, Robespierre too had undergone the 'national razor', once the aristocrats retaliated. Francis would have followed, and his neck still would have born that mark as a memory of these dark times.

Now, he was disobeying again, he guessed. But there was no way he could have. France was barely a thing anymore, aside from a massive joke. What was freedom even? Nothing much in this context. It was a matter of time before nothing would remain of that idea. Yet, there was so much he had left behind. So many people, fighting for that freedom...

What if he had stayed anyway? Would he have spent his time hiding in the woods, hiding from the ennemy and going out at night to sabotage his own roads? His people were there, fighting from the inside...

But he would have been isolated from his allies. It was hard for the mail to make it, or to figure what was going on. He would have been lost without everyone else.

"Is everything alright? You seem a little gloomy."

Francis forced a smile and nodded. He was not on his own. He had allies. He had his people fighting from the oustide as well.

What if, what if, what if...

The past can never be changed, no matter how hard you try. One can never come back. Think too much about it and you forget about today, about tomorow. What ifs can make you lose your sense of time as your imagination has no limit.

Avec des "si", on pourrait mettre Paris en bouteille.


End file.
